Letting People’s Opinions Keep Us Stuck

When Other People's Opinions Keep Us Stuck

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As humans, we are very concerned about what the tribe thinks of us, and once upon a time, for a good reason. Long ago, not fitting in could have meant being the group’s weak link, causing us to be left behind to survive on our own so the tribe wouldn’t be compromised. Fitting in was a matter of life or death!

Now in the twenty-first century, this is not the case for us adults living our modern-day life. Not fitting in will most definitely not cause us death, yet our brain will do it’s hardest to convince you that this is a lie. Our brain wants us to stay stuck in our limiting belief, it thinks you are safer there.

First, I want you to pick a recent decision you’ve wanted to make and see how another’s opinion might affect your decision.

Let’s start by playing a little game, you know me, I LOVE to play! Let’s go back to your last big decision; maybe it was getting out of bed this morning, for real! Just come up with any decision, and I’m going to show you how this works with a decision like getting out of bed.

Example decisions could be:

  • Having that cake or donut or pizza, or all three
  • Quitting your job and starting your own business
  • Taking some time off of work
  • Leaving the party early
  • Choosing to not have a drink at dinner with your friends
  • Joining a program or taking a class

Secondly, I’d like you to write down what you think other people’s opinions might be about your choice.

Let’s go back to waking up when the alarm goes off. Let’s also pretend that you have mentioned to your partner that you’d like to start getting up earlier to get your workout in before work. The alarm goes off in the morning when you wanted to get up, and your partner pops right up out of bed. You want to stay under the covers and snuggle in. The thought crosses your mind that he might think you are lazy for not getting out of bed when you said you would. Now you feel guilty for wanting to stay in bed, and you start complaining about being tired, how you want to sleep another 15 minutes. You stay under the covers but don’t sleep one bit; you complain and tell yourself stories about how annoying your partner is. 30 minutes later, you drag yourself out of bed, complain about how late it is, rush around like a crazy woman making for a stressful morning. All of this resulting in you not doing what you said you wanted to do, thinking that you’re lazy, and getting annoyed with your partner, blaming him for making you feel guilty. None of this has anything to do with what your partner does, says, thinks, but when we don’t take care of our own needs, we will often look outside of ourselves to reason for our discomfort.

Pay attention to how you are getting into someone else’s head and letting them determine your outcome. When we are thinking these things about other people they are reflections of what we are thinking about ourselves.

  • He thinks I’m lazy > I think I’m lazy
  • She thinks I should stick with my old job > I think I should keep my old job and I’m afraid to decide on me
  • They think I’m fat because I eat pizza > I think I’m fat
  • He thinks I should work instead of taking a vacation > I think I don’t deserve a vacation
  • She thinks I’m boring for leaving the party early > I think I’m boring
  • They don’t think I’ll finish this course I’m wanting to purchase > I don’t think I’m going to complete this course I’m wanting to purchase

Now imagine yourself being able to make that decision from a place of believing in yourself.

Imagine letting go of the meaning you are making other people’s actions mean. How can we get out of their head and stay in our own? The solution is in creating belief and self-confidence in yourself that allows you to let others be who they are and not make their actions mean anything about who you are as a person.

I like to imagine myself going to the space after making the decision I want to make, the one that honors me. How would you have let anyone else’s actions not mean anything about you and everything about them? How would you have allowed others to think, say, and do their own thing knowing that you have your own back? You left the party when you said, got to bed early, and woke up feeling amazing.

Then, imagine going to the space after not making the decision you wanted to make because of what you thought other people were thinking. You stayed at the party late, drank more than you wanted to, only got a few hours of sleep, and woke up with a hang-over.

While I was thinking about all of this and writing this post, I then thought about the scenario of peer pressure around seeking mental wellness.

One of the main reasons people don’t seek a mental wellness professional is the fear of what other people will think, other people’s opinions.

It keeps us from doing many of the things we want to do, like seeking a personal trainer, getting a gym membership, taking a dance class, and hiring a professional to help us with our business website. Still, the most detrimental decision it keeps us from is the decision to invest in our ourselves.

When we let go of what others think and decide to be all in on ourselves, that’s when we can actually invest in ourselves and create the success that we have only dreamed of in the past. The only way to fully get to that place is to trust and believe in yourself – exactly what we do in AwakenYou.

As you start building a strong relationship with yourself you start noticing when you’re holding yourself back. You already just did an exercise of awareness, the more you start to see what you’re doing and the error of your thoughts you can start self-correcting.

Once you begin to Awaken(YourTrue)You you’ll start to catch on when your brain is working in it’s old operating system and needs to be self corrected into it’s new mode of operation. That new upgraded operating system decides what’s best for us without worrying what others think.

If this article resonated with you I also wrote another blog about other people’s opinions that has a whole different perspective, go check it out!

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

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Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

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When We Think We Have No One

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That lonely feeling comes when we think we’ve been left behind by all the people we love and are left all alone. We feel hopeless, we disappear, withdraw, binge on whatever distracts us from our pain, we don’t support ourselves, and all of the actions we find ourselves taking have us leaving ourselves behind.

I was coaching someone on this the other day. She couldn’t see anything positive about her situation; she was stuck sitting in a pile of self-pity, unable to crawl out. This is not an uncommon situation to find ourselves when life seems to be throwing us all the wrong cards from the deck. Our mind gets stuck in a downward spiral of negative thinking, and we find it almost impossible to dig up even one positive thought. Today I’m going to be your helping hand by pulling you out of the pool you might find yourself drowning in.

How to get out of the self-pity pile

Ask good questions.

Often, the best tactic out of our mess is to sit in it for a while and assess what is truly happening. Let’s start by asking yourself questions that will get your brain out of its current thought loop. I wrote a post about asking yourself great questions that can help you with this. Asking yourself good questions is a way of directing that incredibly smart brain of yours. Your brain wants to be put to work; it wants to problem solve, so now is as good of a time as any to put it to work on something other than where it is defaulting to with thought errors (thoughts that keep you from moving forward).

  • How did we get here?
  • What is perfect about where we are right now?
  • How are all of the negative thoughts my mind is coming up with not true?
  • If I knew something beautiful was going to come out of this, what would I do right now?
  • How is this all for me?

Really dig into the truth of where you are and then ask yourself this question:

Am I really alone?

Equal air time.

Next it’s time to direct your brain towards all of the positive things you have in your life. When we are stuck in the self-pity pool our brain seems determined to keep punching us in the face, it’s time to set the boxing gloves down and start focusing on something different. I have a fun exercise I have my clients do where they list all of the things they have accomplished in their life, please download it here and start your own list. Every time your brain goes to the negative pull out your list and add some more things to the list, direct that toddler brain!

We are never alone, ever. When we think we are alone we are disconnected from ourselves and we are disconnected from our Creator. One of my favorite quotes by Wayne Dyer is “You cannot be lonely if you like the person you are alone with.”

Sometimes life has a way of forcing us into a spot where we are blessed to be alone. Time alone is time to focus on ourselves, to look in the mirror, give ourselves a high-five and dig in.

Naturally we don’t like when people leave us. There was a point in human existence where it meant being outcast and possibly left to die. Our brain though hasn’t caught up with our modern world, people leaving us doesn’t mean we will die, starve and be eaten by the lions.

Ask yourself how you will utilize this time to grow. How will you trust that everything will work itself out for your good?

You are never alone, ever. If you try my tactics and still can’t seem to get yourself above water then please book yourself a free coaching session or get on my mailing list and join my monthly free coaching public call, every first Wednesday of the month so I can help you move one step forward.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

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Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(YourTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

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What is Cognitive Dissonance?

Cognitive Dissonance

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Cognitive what? I know it sounds a bit difficult, but I’m going to break it down for you because it’s something that we all experience, and once you understand it, you’ll be able to see it at work in your life. Once we recognize cognitive dissonance for what it is, we can close the gap between what you currently believe and what you want to believe.

Let’s start with a definition. Cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

Yikes!

Let’s break it down a bit more because if you’re not confused, I am. Basically, cognitive dissonance is when we know how we want to act, we know the “right” beliefs that could get us to take the actions we want to take, but yet we don’t believe those thoughts enough to take the action we desire consistently.

Phew. I know, it’s a mouth-full!

Cognitive dissonance can also work in reverse where you have taken steps towards your future self and are doing the things that you want to be doing but your old self and thoughts are trying to tell you that you can’t do it. I call this identity crisis which I will speak about in a future post.

Cognitive dissonance examples:

  • Knowing sugar isn’t good for you but eating it anyway.
  • Knowing that we want to get up early tomorrow morning having a rested and clear mind but staying up late and watching Netflix anyway.
  • Wanting to snuggle on a Friday night with our honey but staying at work late instead.

The work I do as a coach helps you see your current beliefs and how they are serving you. What that means is we uncover the things you are thinking that are keeping you from achieving what you want in your love relationship. Once we understand how we feel is coming from how we are thinking, we can then start looking at what other beliefs we might want to begin working towards.

The trick is that once we decide where it is we want to go with our new belief, cognitive dissonance steps in between that new belief and our old one. How long it will take us to eliminate the dissonance truly depends on our willingness to do the work of banning the old thought and how long that old thought has been lurking in our brain. It also requires that you take believable steps in your new belief creation; downloading the thought laddering worksheet found in my post “Getting From Here To There” will help tremendously in this process.

The process of closing the cognitive dissonance gap is one of the biggest reasons we hire coaches. First, a coach helps you discover the pesky belief holding you back; then your coach helps you close the gap of disbelief and keep you moving towards a belief that will serve the life you want to create for yourself. On our own we will always gravitate towards the belief we’ve identified with, our coach helps us uncover how we are doing this so we can keep making progress.

The gap between what we currently believe and what we want to believe can seem difficult to overcome. As much as we dream of the desired results and as much as we despise where we currently are, there is comfort in the mess that we sit in. Take a look at the industry I served for over thirty years, the “fitness division” of the health and wellness industry—so many people miserable where they are yet stuck in that misery. “About 82.1 million adults spend an estimated $28.6 billion on gym memberships each year. And yet 6.3% of these aspirational gymgoers never end up using them.” That, my loves, is some cognitive dissonance!

Where we want to be and what it means to us.

Most of us have dreams of being somewhere other than where we are in life and I believe that’s a beautiful thing, I’m all in on growing, learning, expanding our horizons. The problem is how we think we will feel when we get there, our reason for getting there is that we think life will be better “there.” Most of us think our lives will be better when we have the love, have the car, have the job, have the goal weight and so we keep chasing that better life. Here’s the problem though, we’re not enjoying where we are, what we have achieved so when we get there we will be looking ahead to the next, never satisfied.

Pay attention. Look at some goals you have achieved; maybe you’ve married the man (or woman), bought the car, and landed the job, but you’re still not happy. That’s because you are always in search of the happiness outside of yourself, in that next best thing, never truly enjoying the current victory for more than a moment before you move on, not truly in love with where you are.

I love asking myself, “What is perfect about right now?”

It’s when we can fully love ourselves and our current life that we can actually start drawing more to us, but not because we need them to feel happy, but simply because we want to. When we know where we want to be, we can recognize that the achievement will be the reward and that life will still be 50/50 when we get there; that’s when we start making true progress towards our dreams while fully enjoying the space between here and there.

Where we are and our belief in attaining our goal.

Most of the time, our belief in ourselves and our ability to achieve our goal is in the dump. When this is the case, it’s difficult for us to believe enough to invest in ourselves.

Working in the fitness industry for thirty years showed me how much money people will throw at promises to look good. Yet, we are reluctant to invest in what will allow us to achieve our fitness goals, sustain those goals, and achieve our life goals. Why? Because we don’t believe in ourselves, we want someone else to tell us what to do so we can look to them when things don’t go the way we expect. Learning how to manage our mind allows us to create our own path, the path that will produce lasting change.

The price of the coaching program doesn’t matter when a person’s dissonance is large. If the program is cheap, they may buy-in, but only because their rationale is that they might lose that money and they are ok with that. When the program is worth its gold weight, they doubt themselves so much that the price becomes the obstacle to starting.

Once we learn how to be all in ourselves and believe that we can create our desired results, that’s when we wouldn’t even consider the “cheap” program because we believe in the value we will produce for ourselves. We know the value is priceless and that we will be making an investment that will easily pay itself off.

Stepping into belief and closing the dissonance gap.

One, you could decide today to be all in on believing in yourself and your ability to produce the promised results with your new coach’s help. This is a stretch for most people, and that’s why I offer so much free value here on my blog, in my free courses, and on my social media platforms. It allows people to start the work independently, start closing the dissonance gap and start taking steps towards self-belief, self-trust, and trust in me as their future coach. As you create the results on your own you will know that continuing this work with a professional will put you in the fast lane.

My job is to show you how to believe in yourself, help you to believe that you are worthy and capable of the results of this work.

Personally, I have watched the cognitive dissonance be reduced in so many areas of my life, the biggest one is seeing, believing and investing in the work of cleaning my own mind.

I used to yearn for the dream; I believed my dream was worth millions, yet I didn’t believe hard enough to justify investment in a coach to guide me. The truth is, I didn’t believe in my ability to create the results, but I did the work of narrowing my cognitive dissonance, and then I believed enough to dive into the deep end.

I will NEVER regret that decision.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

I am a life coach who works with individuals to break down relationship barriers by awakening their true self. My process isn’t about changing your partner, it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your marriage. If you’re ready to take your life and your love relationship to the next level then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of

Post Traumatic Growth With Monaye Marcia

post traumatic growth with Monaye Marcia

Today’s guest is Monaye Marcia of Monaye Marcia Coaching. Coach Monaye teaches her clients how to create a post traumatic growth mindset. This mindset is a positive psychological change born out of a stressful or traumatic circumstance. Achievement of this mindset not only helps her clients manage their trauma; they actually thrive and grow because of it.
Monaye coaches for The Divinity House, a trauma-informed re-entry home for formerly incarcerated women. She also is a founding member of The Coaches of Color Collective, a monthly roundtable that focuses on strengthening the black community by empowering their minds. Monaye also enjoys soaking up the sun in Nevada with her two children.

Listen in as this beautiful soul shares her journey into life coaching and how she helps the people she serves, enjoy!

Thank you so much for listening! Here is how you can find Monaye and the resources that she shared:

Monaye Marcia Coaching (webpage)

Instagram

Facebook 

Free course: Post-Traumatic Growth Mindset Formula

Book recommendation: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

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Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

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Stop Avoiding Your Lover

🎧 Prefer to listen to the audio version? Click here!

“You are cold-hearted and non-emotional, I’m tired of being ignored! I am always the one who has to plan our time together, obviously, you don’t care enough to put any energy into our relationship.”

Deb has had it, she just wishes Jack would change. She is full of resentment and tired of fighting against him. Instead of coming up with solutions, Deb starts finding ways to get away from her husband as a form of punishment. Punishment because she isn’t actually enjoying the activities she chooses to participate in, instead she is using them against Jack hoping that he’ll change.

One of the most common actions my clients take when they are experiencing some sort of negative emotion like resentment, fear, confusion, anger, resignation is avoidance. They decide to start “doing things for themselves” but not actually enjoying their time, they aren’t using the time to grow, explore and connect with themselves. Imagine this; you want to get in shape, like build some shoulders, glutes, and have a 6 pack but working out just doesn’t work for you. So instead you watch workout videos, athletic events, collect workout plans, apps, equipment but none of this gets you any closer to your vision, it actually moves you further from your vision. You are avoiding the actual work of it.

Let’s dig into the why of your avoidant actions.

Resentment has us wanting and expecting our partners to take care of our needs. We want them to do all of the things that will make us feel loved and connected because somewhere along the line, we learned that other people’s actions determine how we feel. “Make mommy happy by cleaning up your room,” “I’d feel so much better if you told me you loved me.”, “Give grandpa a kiss goodbye, so you don’t hurt his feelings.” Pay attention to other people’s conversations, pay attention to the conversation in your own head and notice how true it is; as you start to see the prevalence of this behavior, you can start deciding if you like it or not.

Let’s take a look at what it is you do when you are feeling resentment, fear, confusion, anger, resignation in your romantic relationship. Let me guess about some actions you might be taking:

  • Avoid
  • Blame
  • Complain
  • Expect them to change
  • Don’t proactively plan activities together
  • You spend more time at work
  • Go out with your friends more than usual
  • Search for things to do that you haven’t done for yourself in years, but not for enjoyment sake – out of resentment
  • Spend money on things that don’t matter for a temporary “feel good”
  • Maybe you eat more than you’d like
  • Have a drink or two more because that might get you in the mood of having a good time with your partner

Can you see how every single one of these actions are a form of avoidance? All of these actions have you changing into someone your spouse might not want to be with AND further away from someone YOU want to be with! It gets you further from your goal of creating an intimate relationship, both with yourself and your partner.

So what’s in the way of getting what you want in your relationship?

You. Yep, I typed that correctly. You are in your own way of getting what you want in your relationship. You are waiting for them to do the things you want them to do which gives them all of the control in your relationship and in how you feel. Boo! That won’t work for you my friend, trust me I’ve tried it, all it does is get you further from exactly what you want, which is lots of love.

How to stop avoiding your partner.

Now it’s time to start digging into all of the reasons you want them to do these things. We actually uncovered that in the story of Deb and Jack’s relationship, she wants him to make her feel good. Deb gives Jack all of her emotional power in their relationship, Jack feels manipulated if he abides by her demands without feeling honoring and Deb ends up losing herself in the process.

The first step Deb needed to take is becoming aware of this simple fact. We do this exact thing in so many of our relationships, we are expecting them to act a certain way, over and over and over again. We wonder why we’re getting so frustrated, the whole time forgetting how to fill ourselves up all on our own. When we keep expecting our love to come from an outside source we are always craving our next fix, looking for that next hit of pleasure outside of ourselves. These outside pleasures leave us empty, maybe overweight, hungover and sad.

To turn the cycle around, you will want to start taking care of your mental health; you’ll want to take your power back and start working on how you will find joy for yourself. You may ask why you should do that; you thought that’s what marriage was, your partner providing you with the love and support you need, that my friend is a lofty ask for anyone and quite dangerous. That will have your partner all weak and not themselves, continually trying to make you happy. That is a lose-lose situation for both of you. It’s time to let go of your manuals, start practicing emotional adulthood, and start nurturing that dried up love seed that you’ve unknowingly been neglecting.

The good news is this; when Deb started taking her focus off of Jack she started feeling so much better, she felt empowered, satisfied, responsible, and joyous which led her to start opening up in conversation with Jack. She doesn’t need him to fill up her joy tank because she is learning how to do that all by herself. Now Jack gets to be himself while she gets to enjoy her best life to date. Deb has learned how to Awaken her true self!

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

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Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

Overcoming Pain With Phoebe Grace

Overcoming Pain With Phoebe Grace

Welcome to my first interviews with experts! My journey of curating value for my audience has been a beautiful journey of self-growth. Last month I started thinking about how I could provide all of you with more value and here we are, every last Tuesday of the month I will be bringing you an expert in the field of mental health. We all have different journeys, each bringing us our own set of obstacles and my hope is that these guest experts will help you reach out and find the help you are looking for.

Today’s guest is Phoebe Grace of Overcoming With Grace. Phoebe has been married for 11 years with 2 beautiful kids and a Labrador. She loves working with women to help them overcome some of life’s greatest pains, so they can feel free, worthy, and loved. She is passionate about helping them LIVE when they feel like life isn’t worth living anymore because of all the pain. Phoebe also spends her time with Jesus, her family, listening to music, eating delicious food, and watching with her hubby.

Listen in as this beautiful soul shares her journey into life coaching and how she helps the women she serves, enjoy!

Thank you so much for listening! Here is how you can find Phoebe and the resources that she shared:

Overcoming With Grace (webpage)

Instagram

Facebook 

Resources Phoebe shared:

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Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life-changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability, your future life is waiting for you.

Know someone hurting in their relationships? If you think they might benefit from hearing this message please share this article with them. You might be the one who leads them to their best life.

Don’t forget to join my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself and never miss another post, get yourself signed up for my newsletter!